India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/business/india-modi-health-care.html <comment><USER2> The govt. of Andhra Pradesh (a state in India) has pioneered a state backed insurance program several years ago with reasonable success ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarogyasri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarogyasri)). The problem however with these programs is that corruption within the healthcare industry is still endemic and doctors create fake diagnoses and perform unnecessary surgeries on patients to get their reimbursements from Aarogya-sri. If this program is to be rolled out a national scale, the govt. needs to address the systematic corruption in the healthcare industry first.

That said, I think Aarogyasri was overall a huge success in my state and has saved millions of lives and I'm excited to see it being adopted at a national level.

<comment><USER3> Definitely Aarogyasri in AP saved millions of Lives. Current administration tried to remove the program since its not introduced by them and can't take credit for. So they are trying to kill it slowly (By removing people from program, cutting benefits etc).

I wonder what will happen to this Free Health insurance program when central government changes next time.

<comment><USER4> The current state government is pro business and don't have any money to implement or continue any past programs. Whatever money they have is spent on pet projects and making themselves rich.

The previous government even though was corrupt at least did something for the poor. I personally witnessed AROGYASHRI being used by the poor and the amount of stability it bought to their daily lives.

I also agree that there was lot of corruption in the program. If the choice is between saving the lives of the poor with corruption vs letting them die without I would choose the former any day. After all, the healthcare system in the US is filled with corrupt participants.

Let's us not make the perfect the enemy of the good.

P.S:- I am not a citizen of India or don't have any Indian roots but I lived there for a few years doing volunteer social work to help the poor.

<comment><USER5> > If the choice is between saving the lives of the poor with corruption vs > letting them die without I would choose the former any day

This is very important. We need to finally realize that corruption is endemic to the system, and when corruption is raised as an issue it is generally to disadvantage the poor (last time I looked Wall Street is still doing fine even under the highest levels of corruption one can imagine).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Giving free healthcare is a good step, but the important question is how good will it be and how much will be covered.

Brazil has 100% of its population (210M people) covered by free, single-payer, universal healthcare, resulting in a life expectancy of 75 years (US is 79, Japan and Switzerland with 83 IIRC).

But your experience can vary dramatically. It all depends on how much money is actually being put on it (in healthcare-costs-PPP-adjusted $/capita).

<comment><USER7> Not necessarily a counterpoint but Chile's dual system -private and public, both with copay for most- gives them a life expectancy of 81.79 years, surpassing a lot of more developed countries with free universal healthcare.

<comment><USER8> Almost every universal healthcare system is has some degree of mix of private and public.

Norway is on the far extreme with it's strict restrictions on private healthcare. Almost every other country has private healthcare insurance as at least an option.

The question tends to be how much you end up contributing towards public healthcare if you take out a private option - ranging from no difference (you pay the same taxes no matter what), to only healthcare for poor/unemployed coming out of general taxation.

<comment><USER9> Strict restrictions? I can chose whatever hospital I want and the government will pay for it regardless as long as a GP has referred me to them. If you want you can just pay out of your pocket as well without going through a GP.

There is even a portal where you can search for your ailment and choose hospital (private or public) based on their waiting lists.

[https://helsenorge.no/velg-behandlingssted](https://helsenorge.no/velg- behandlingssted)

The government also buys up a lot of the private spots to reduce public waiting lists. Last time I was in due to sinus infection, I went to a private and a public clinic both paid for in full by the government.

<comment><USER6> Restrictions aren't just on users, but on providers as well. If you don't see restrictions as an user, it's because most of the restrictions are on the providers.

And nothing wrong with that, I actually support that model, just like in Switzerland, where healthcare is private, but mandated by the government and heavily regulated (with less-regulated private complimentary insurance options).

It allows for innovation and competition between providers, without the harm to users due to the asymmetry of power.

Oh, and births are free.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, the the post I replied to claimed there were restrictions on private clinics specifically, but the public clinics/hospitals have to follow the same rules.

Also: are there any places that charge for births???? That sounds ridiculous and insane to me.

<comment><USER6> > Also: are there any places that charge for births???? That sounds ridiculous > and insane to me.

Then the entire US healthcare system will sound ridiculous and insane to you :)

And, to be honest, it is. I have American friends who had accidents while in developing countries (broke an arm in Costa Rica) and were puzzled that they were treated and didn't have to pay anything, or very little (broke feet in Croatia).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A key paragraph from the article which better explains the finances behind this policy:

 _" The health care plan ... would offer 100 million families up ... $7,860, of coverage each year. That sum, while small by Western standards, would be enough to cover the equivalent of five heart surgeries in India."_

It's much easier to provide universal healthcare, when medical costs are low. Finding ways to bring down costs in the US, would go a long way towards improving the healthcare situation here.

<comment><USER11> China, too

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I might be sounding negative, but the current PM is known to be someone who just promises a million things. This is just a prop for 2019 because he has absolutely destroyed the economy and the RBI.

I seriously doubt if this will actually be implemented ever. This is the magic of India, They won't deny insurance, but when the people will go to create insurance, there will be some or the other issue with the system and they won't be able to apply for it.

Also the media is a sycophant of the govt so nobody will question it and on the exterior, it'll be shown that they did provide insurance although nobody got anything.

</comment><comment><USER13> I just hope it works very well because it seems every year there is one new populist measure. There is already:

a. Food Security which provides food to nearly 2/3rd of the population or 820 million people.

b. Minimum Support prices for grains which was hiked in this budget. Farmers also get loan waivers.

c. National Rural Employment Guarantee which provides employment to over 100 million people

<comment><USER14> Universal healthcare is cast as a 'populist' measure in the US. But if you look at data of cost of healthcare for nations applying universal healthcare vs those who do not in developed nations, India might rationally look at it as an economic efficiency measure.

Agricultural supports also can be looked at with a political filter, but the US provides government back agricultural insurance as a positive economic measure. Otherwise there may be a dwindling population of farmers and farming companies and increased food instability. One could argue about private vs publically funding these stabilization and boosting measures but it's much simpler/stabler to provide some forms long term guarantees via gov't policy than hoping a private market does it and does it correctly (without wiping out or consuming their customers). Are all these measures the same? No, but you have to look deeper than populist bad, private markets good.

<comment><USER13> Isn't universal healthcare that all people and communities have the same access to healthcare? India's population is 1.3 billion and this says it will cover 500 million people. So, it doesn't cover all people and communities. It covers some part of the population.

Let's say Obamacare covered only a specific section of US what would have happened then?

To clarify my stand here, I am in favor of Universal Healthcare but not this.

Edit: I saw your edit on agriculture later. So, let me count that out too. We should do everything to support agriculture but the whole policy is skewed towards grains and every bump happens helps to ingrain the fact that grains good but vegetables bad. Do we really want that? So, I am in favor of a policy which works for all and not for specific sections which at least Indian laws tend to do.

<comment><USER8> In a lot of countries with universal healthcare it is provided by the government insuring the poorest and the unemployed, and requiring everyone else to insure themselves. The idea being that it gives those with the means who might want to pick and choose higher levels of coverage can do so, but nobody gets left behind.

<comment><USER13> Thank you for highlighting that.

Food Security bill provided coverage to 2/3rd of population which was estimated to be 850 million people.

This bill says it will cover up to 500 million people.

So there are 320 million people who are poor that they can't eat but not poor for health care. That is the question on inclusive-ness.

Though we have to see the full bill to actually find out what exactly is going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They say Proof is in the pudding.

I am wary of applauding before seeing how well this is implemented. India is known to come up with lot of big programs that make good rhetoric, but not all of them are implemented with equal amount of vigor or commitment.

I am sure part of the motivation may be to help next election cycle which is coming soon.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a blatant lie. The devil is in the details and the detail is there has been no specific funds allocated in the budget for this nor are there any specifics about how the funds will be allocated in the future.[1] This is just a vague expression of intent. Precisely the type that _every_ politician will make when in desperate need of good will - exactly what Modi is in need of.

[1] thread about this [https://twitter.com/Memeghnad/status/959026718722768896](https://twitter.com/Memeghnad/status/959026718722768896)

<comment><USER16> To whoever downvoted, here's an exercise -- download all the pdfs from [http://www.indiabudget.gov.in/index.asp](http://www.indiabudget.gov.in/index.asp) do a quick search in any of the documents for "National Health Protection Scheme" and let us know if you find it any where other than the speech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >> The health care plan, part of the government's 2018-19 budget presented on Thursday, would offer 100 million families up to 500,000 rupees, or about $7,860, of coverage each year.

Thats roughly $800B dollars, or over 30% of India's GDP. What am I missing? Most people won't participate?

EDIT: according to the article, the Finance Ministry has allocated $314 million (or 4 hundredths of a percent of the theoretical max total benefit). As in, the funding they acknowledge is non-existent.

<comment><USER18> 500M people times $7860/yr is $3.93 trillion (the max possible coverage). But if only $314M is authorized, the average person will receive only 314M/500M, or about 63 cents.

<comment><USER19> That's not how you calculate when it comes to insurance. You can't divorce life from maths. In your calculations you are assuming 500 million people will all fall ill at the same time and each will claim the full $7860 for the year which is next to impossible. In my opinion, $314 million is more than enough for now unless India is struck by an epidemic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I highly recommend reading this answer to understand the Indian budget better. I hope this helps clear a few questions. [https://www.quora.com/How-do-you- see-the-union-budget-2018-1...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-see-the- union-budget-2018-19-presented-by-Arun-Jaitley/answer/Balaji- Viswanathan-2?share=e00f6859&srid=CQoI)

</comment><comment><USER21> To be read as - the elections are coming. Mr Modi is seeking a second term.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_elections_in_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_elections_in_India)

NYT article to be read in tandem with this one

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-budget/with- electio...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-budget/with-elections- coming-up-indias-government-will-aim-to-woo-rural-voters-in-budget- idUSKBN1FH0GJ)

<comment><USER22> If Mr Modi has rolled out free health care to 500 million people, saving millions of lives, probably a good thing and I hope it wins him some votes!

<comment><USER21> India already has free healthcare for all the citizens. Its just that its not efficient and well managed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_India)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> To have any chance of success they should fix the corruption first, otherwise it will become yet another way to waste taxpayers' money.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is a sham. There is no specific allocation for the same in the budget. State Governments have been instituting insurance cover for population for ages and it is available around the same quantum. Generally insurance in India like any other country has the effect of artificially inflating healthcare cost. India would do well to spend money on improving public health infrastructure instead.

<comment><USER24> [http://www.firstpost.com/business/budget-2018-arun- jaitleys-...](http://www.firstpost.com/business/budget-2018-arun-jaitleys- modicare-health-scheme-is-music-to-the-ears-of-50-crore-indians-but-its-too- good-to-be-real-4332001.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Until the details are revealed, I won't buy this. It seems to have been introduced to take advantage of upcoming elections.

The reason I'm skeptical about this step is because there are simply no specific blueprint whatsoever. And with recent government implementations, their biggest failure turns out to be ambiguity. Good example is GST. After it's launch several month's ago, almost every big/small industry is finding it hard to get the specific details.

I highly doubt about government's ability to implement it. This insurance should have been given on basis of economical standing. Choosing a random 500M number is good for making headlines but again it is not clear on who will gain this insurance benefits?, what will be covered?, how to claim it? I foresee, "divide and rule" :p

On another note, please have a look at Sensex. It's near all time high. The reason behind such rally is not FII but DII. Infact, FII has actively removed over $20Bn since 2015. There was slight influx of FII money post two months of demonetisation but again outflow increased in following months. But still Sensex didn't crashed because of the counter balance from DII or read it as mostly mutual fund companies. Also, I had noticed an increased expenditure in mutual fund investment ads on TV and almost all types of media. And these ads were sponsored mostly by govt bodies and associations. There is nothing wrong to invest in mutual funds. But when I heard about long term and short term capital gains tax today, things got much clearer for me as to why DII raised some much cash in very short period of time. To check the validity of above numbers, you can refer to sensex related stats on moneycontrol.com and check out the YoY sensex FII/DII activity. It has a very well explanatory chart about it.

<comment><USER19> > Good example is GST. After it's launch several month's ago, almost every > big/small industry is finding it hard to get the specific details.

I don't get what problems does industry have with regards to GST apart from simpler return filing and changes in rates. The implementation was itself smoother than expected. Just compare with other countries that implemented GST and you'll realise that it took almost 2 years for things to stabilize. Comparatively, the implementation and addressal of most issues took only few months! Today, Hasmukh Adhia also hinted at automatic preparation of GST returns and simplification of invoice entry by directly entering details into the system which is pretty amazing if you ask me. I'm actually quite happy with how GST has shaped. Especially when compared to other governmental bodies which have error prone systems. I have faced no issues filing GSTR-3B returns and with simplification of GSTR-1 and GSTR-2 I guess all worries are taken care of.

<comment><USER26> GST is only complex for people who don't have to file it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For a population of 1.3 Billion this is less than half the population. Other countries cover 100% population with such schemes. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_health_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_health_insurance_coverage)

</comment><comment><USER28> TFA: "India's government spent just 1.4 percent of the country's gross domestic product on health care in 2014, little changed as a proportion of the economy in 20 years, according to the World Bank. China, by contrast, spent 3.1 percent of its G.D.P. on health care in 2014; the United States spent 8.3 percent in the same year."

CMS.gov: "U.S. health care spending grew 4.3 percent in 2016, reaching $3.3 trillion or $10,348 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.9 percent."

World Bank puts total health care expenditure at 17.1% for the US in 2014 and 4.6% for India...

They must mean just US _government_ spending, not counting private expenditure.

[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?end=2014...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?end=2014&locations=US&start=1995&view=chart)

<comment><USER29> CMS is reporting _total_ US healthcare spending; TFA is discussing _government_ healthcare spending; total (federal, state, and local) government spending was 45.2% of all health expenditures in the US [0], which applied to the 17.9% of GDP for total US healthcare expenditures gives 8.1% GDP public expenditures in 2016, very similar to the 8.3% TFA reports for 2014.

EDIT: Ah, my post crossed your edit, which recognizes the issue, but:

> They must mean just US government spending, not counting private > expenditure.

The part you quote from TFA _explicitly_ says it is comparing government expenditures.

[0] from the same CMS page you seem to be using: [https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and- systems/sta...](https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and- systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact- sheet.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Cheap, fast and great generally don't go together. Depending on the problem, you have to pick either one or two but not all three. It will be interesting to see how this experiment pans out in India. I wholeheartedly wish success for them because this is something we have to put behind our back before we enter the next decade.

</comment><comment><USER31> Half-baked [https://qz.com/1195447/budget-2018-what-students-from-iim- jn...](https://qz.com/1195447/budget-2018-what-students-from-iim-jnu-and-isb- thought-of-arun-jaitleys-budget/)

</comment><comment><USER32> The article reads as if this is health insurance, however it uses both terms health care and health insurance. Those are entirely different from each other.

One believes that preventative care will increase health, limiting the need for procedures and pills. The other believes that one can pay a lower premium (possibly through the state), betting on getting sick. These are opposite of each other.

I'm not saying this is bad - just that people have to know what is being discussed, or inevitably people will be disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER33> Prescription Pad is a clinic management software provides all types of facilities for hospitals & doctors.

The best part of the software is Prescription writing facilities for doctors & drug & brand interaction checker tool.

For more info please visit:

[http://www.prescriptionpad.in](http://www.prescriptionpad.in)

</comment><comment><USER34> India doesn't get it. Defending the world from terrorism is 1000x more important then basic health insurance. How can health insurance defend the people against suicide bombers? The only thing that can defend people from suicide bombers is the 1.5 Trillion dollar F-35, the greatest war plane ever made.

<comment><USER35> Number of people dying in india due to health is ~1000x more than ones killed in terrorism.

<comment><USER34> I was being sarcastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> _to 500,000 rupees, or about $7,860, of coverage each year. That sum, while small by Western standards, would be enough to cover the equivalent of five heart surgeries in India._

If something like this is implemented, I'm curious to see what it does to prices - will a heart surgery continue to cost less than $2,000?

Healthcare seems like a supply problem to me, not a demand one. Where healthcare is affordable, demand should be stable year-to-year. It seems like what's needed is more doctors and devices, not more ways to pay.

<comment><USER37> > If something like this is implemented, I'm curious to see what it does to > prices - will a heart surgery continue to cost less than $2,000?

In most countries, the cost of such operations are fixed by the state (ex: Canada).

> "Where healthcare is affordable, demand should be stable year-to-year.

What do you mean? There are so many factors that could explain higher healthcare costs, including an aging population, or better health coverage.

I'm also not sure what it means for healthcare to be affordable. In most countries, the cost seems proportional to the general wealth. The US might be the exception, since it's one of the few countries with great wealth disparity and with a non-universal system (more bureaucratic overhead/costs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> in a lot of countries having a government provided health care system (with private if you wish to pay more for quicker/better) is Normal rather than a political idea that only 1 side is allowed to support.

</comment><comment><USER39> I love that that's not even half of India.

</comment><comment><USER40> India has 1,320m people. This headline is slightly concerning, given the caste system in place that engineers poverty. Who is paying for it and who is getting the benefit?

</comment><comment><USER41> Why is this posted on HN?

</comment><comment><USER42> I can't see how India is going to afford this. As stated in another comment it could cost up to $800B dollars, which is 30% of India's GDP. If this causes India to have financial issues as a country, it's their own fault for not doing basic accounting and number crunching.

<comment><USER43> That's like saying if everyone maxes out their health insurance, insurance companies will go out of business. In any given year, not everyone is going to use the ~$8000 allocated to them. Also, healthcare in India is cheap. $8000 goes a long way.

<comment><USER44> > healthcare in India is cheap. $8000 goes a long way.

Yeah I think ₹5 lakh is excessive. I have a ₹2 lakh cover for me and my wife and unless we both are diagnosed with bone cancer simultaneously we are in no danger of maxing it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Indian regime should impose 30% Inheritance Tax to fund the free healthcare

</comment><comment><USER45> We got free healthcare in europe that i pay for with atrociously high taxes. Yet whenever i actually need to visit a doctor i always go to a private one.

<comment><USER46> oh, where do you find private doctors in France?

<comment><USER45> I do not know I do not live in France.

<comment><USER46> You said europe like it represents every country

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I really dislike when professional journalists call it "free healthcare", this should really needs to stop. It's not free, half the country will be paying for it with their taxes. In countries with public healthcare up to a third of their taxes expenditure goes to healthcare services, it's a significant expense and far from 'free'.

Journalists should really start using "public healthcare" or "public health insurance", otherwise they are making their agenda quite clear. And I say that in support of gov subsidized health insurance.

<comment><USER48> This is a pointless and pedantic complaint. It's obvious to everyone what "free healthcare" means. Words have multiple meanings, and free in this context means tax-funded. Prescriptive language policing never works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> One of my uncles got paralyzed on his whole left side of body because of carelessness of govt hospital, lack of sanitation, corruption, and the general don't give a fuck attitude of the employees( if they cared to show up to work in the first place).

There is a running joke in India that "You can only go to a govt hospital" implication being that you'd not return alive.

I suspect this is another scheme concocted to gobble up public money via corruption. A gift that would keep giving for decades to come. For politicians to promise jobs in bureaucracy to their caste members.

Ofcourse, Nytimes piece mentions none of this in its effort to push "See even India has 'free' healthcare" ideology.

<comment><USER50> > There is a running joke in India that "You can only go to a govt hospital" > implication being that you'd not return alive.

I have never heard this joke atleast in Mumbai or Pune.

<comment><USER49> Do you or your folks go to govt hospitals?

<comment><USER50> I have not been treated in govt hospital if that is what you are asking but I have been to govt hospitals to check up friends and others who were treated there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bill Gates geeks out on the Ice Bucket Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS6ysDFTbLU?

<comment><USER2> I did the challenge with a slightly different kind of geeking out:

[https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10153169265019988&set=v...](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10153169265019988&set=vb.607869987&type=2&theater)</comment>


Invalid HTTPS Cert for https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com - <AUTHOR> Site: https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com<p>Any site that uses bootstrapcdn.com for Bootstrap/FontAwesome is affected. <comment><USER2> Most likely related to the intermediate certificate. Lots of reports today on twitter about [https://www.globalsign.com/en/status/](https://www.globalsign.com/en/status/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup - looks like the same.</comment></comment>


Revealing Japan's Low-Tech Belly - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10543126.stm

<comment><USER2> It's a strange place to live. It's a mixture of old pre-internet methods that work mixed with some fantastically modern infrastructure.

What works: Whenever I have business with the local ward (city | government) office, a lot of the work is done without computers. Yet my requests are serviced very quickly. Very much unlike say the DMV in Southern California.

What works: High speed Internet, whether wired or through the cell network.

Fail: ATMs that seem to be down for maintenance constantly. Why the constant down time?

Fail: General attitude on change. Just accepting the way things are is norm, even if it's broken or flawed. It's strange since so many strive for perfection.

Fail: In general, the people here are very very smart. But very few people have an original idea and enough will to execute. Related to the Fail above.</comment>


Carbonite Founder's New Cloud Storage Startup Is 1/5 Cost of Amazon S3 - <AUTHOR> http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2017/05/03/carbonite-founder-launches-wasabi-6-times-faster-than-aws-s3/ <comment><USER2> good to know of a new kid in the block. when comparing prices, which is dramatically lower than the competitors, I wonder if .0039 cents per gigabyte is basically just the storage cost and not the cost of w/r/d data over a period of time? one thing that's common among aws, azure, and google cloud is they make their money by charging customers for egress of data. so with this low price Wasabi certainly seems like a good place for archival, but not necessarily primary storage which might do a lot of roundtrips throughout the day.

<comment><USER3> Bandwidth is going to be a major cost driver; this is more a marketing fluff piece than a product offering. No numbers I can find about data transfer, lifecycle operations, multi-region approaches, data durability, or any of the things that AWS handles for us.

I'm highly skeptical for two reasons. The first is that this stuff is hard, and AWS hasn't been particularly gouging people with their pricing model for storage.

The second is looking at the historic on-prem storage market. Generally if you didn't go with the top 3-5 storage vendors, you could expect your vendor to get acquired by one of them, and then immediately EOL whatever you had bought from them, as a few of their features were integrated into the acquirer's offering.

We'll see how it goes, but storage is one of those areas where I'm very slow to adopt new technologies or vendors; mistakes here generally show up catastrophically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds too good to be true. Moreover, no info about HA and durability.

<comment> wasabi-jim Hi folks - this is jim @ wasabi.com Sorry to come late to this thread but I wanted to try to help with some info. Anyway, below is some feedback on the Qs so far in the thread:

\- The $.0039 is for the storage itself and does not include egress transfer charges. These transfer charges are $.04 / GB (which includes AWS Direct Connect fees for fast interconnect with EC2 compute resources if needed). Both $ numbers are lower than S3. Lastly, we don't charge for PUTs / GETs etc. (like most storage providers do) so you may realize some cost savings in that area as well.

\- There is some info our durability, HA, etc. in the FAQ section of wasabi.com/why (We do offer eleven 9s of durability (same as S3) and do have multiple data centers.)

\- The points about Wasabi being "new" are valid but please understand that our dev team has been working on cloud storage since the start of Carbonite (over 10 years ago) and in some cases, even before that. So, we like to think we have some useful experience in this area and welcome the chance to work with any interested parties to demonstrate this.

Happy to help with any direct inquiries....respectfully, jim at wasabi.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Upvoted because I desperately want this vetted by members of a hacker news who know more than I do about cloud storage</comment>


Artificial intelligence yields a powerful new antibiotic - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2020/artificial-intelligence-identifies-new-antibiotic-0220 <comment><USER3> Really exciting. Good to see all of this recent AI progress yield results against a problem that's actually meaningful.

</comment><comment><USER4> One area where I think we need this is SARMs.

I am still waiting for an steroid/SARM which has Anabolic properties but doesn't cause baldness, left ventricular hypertrophy, plaque accumulation through lipid ratio change and other organ damage.

I hate to use steroid/testosterone to keep the muscle mass knowing that it's killing me slowly but I want the gains.

<comment><USER5> I was on gear for more than a decade until a strange incident one morning made me quit.

I had started meditating after my workout for about 20 minutes - <USER2> "following the breath" stuff from Zen/vipassana. I'd been doing this for about 5 months. And after a session one morning, I was brushing my teeth in the mirror. I still had a pump from earlier, and was looking at the front deltoid in my right shoulder jump around as I brushed.

And out of the blue, I was absolutely floored by the pointlessness of my workout regimen. I wasn't lifting for health - in fact, I was actually hurting myself in pursuit of a cluster of goals that revolved around a denial of reality.

Mainly, I was 1) raging against the natural aging of my body, i.e. if I'm strong enough, then clearly I'm not getting older. And 2), I was pursuing a shallow admiration from other people, i.e. if women are attracted to my muscular shell and guys are a little intimidated, then deep down, I'm not really this insecure guy who struggles with social anxiety, right? And 3), the physical body is just so ephemeral. We're only granted a few decades of life, and did I really want to spend all of my waking hours in a self-oriented optimization of the appearance of a muscle-suit?

These illusions just fell away for a few moments, and I couldn't pretend after that. After a few more weeks of my old routine, I tapered off the gear, cut my volume by like 2/3, and. . . lo and behold, had time for other hobbies. I started meeting people outside of the gym, started seeing a counselor for social anxiety, and generally started feeling like, I dunno, a more healthy human being again. I might wear a muscle-suit, but I am not completely identified/defined by it.

I don't wake up in the middle of the night with aching hips & shoulders anymore, only to guzzle a shake so my gainz won't catabolize because I've gone 4 hours without protein.

I still work out, but it's a more reasonable, balanced mix of strength training, cardio, mobility, etc. so that I can be a good dad for my two young kids. I might have gotten a late start on raising a family, but I'm putting my efforts into staying as healthy as possible for them, as well as for myself.

I can only hope that you look within yourself to see the real reasons for your obsession. Maybe your situation is different, but my life has utterly changed for the better since I addressed the baggage that was originally motivating me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm cynical towards science press releases generally but this one sounds legit. Can any more knowledgeable HNers help deflate my optimism? Is this a legitimate use case where machine learning provides unquestionable gains?

<comment><USER7> graph neural networks do generally seem to work pretty well for many tasks and are not snake oil. so it's not unbelievable that they are also able to predict molecule properties with some degree of accuracy — and a fair number of papers have had some success on various datasets of molecular structures over the past couple of years. whether it's a big deal for actual real world drug discovery, i have no idea, but this isn't just a mirage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30102-1?utm...](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(20\)30102-1?utm_medium=homepage)</comment>


Netflix poaches CFO from Activision Blizzard - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netflix-cfo-exclusive/exclusive-netflix-poaches-cfo-from-activision-blizzard-source-idUSKCN1OV19B <comment><USER2> The current title ("Netflix is firing their CFO and poaching a new one from Activision Blizzard") seems to be needlessly (and inaccurately) editorialized. The article headline is both accurate and clear, once you strip out the prefix/suffix ("Netflix poaches CFO from Activision Blizzard").

Specifically, per the article, Netflix's CFO announced back in August that he'd be leaving the company.</comment>


Why I Strive to be a 0.1x Engineer - <AUTHOR> http://benjiweber.co.uk/blog/2016/01/25/why-i-strive-to-be-a-0-1x-engineer/ <comment><USER2> Throughout my career I've definitely been lumping the skills described in this article about not doing work in with the whole "10x developer" catch phrase.

Like:

Customer needs a CMS.

Clyde looks at the requirements for the CMS. He sets off to write hundreds of thousands of lines of code by himself, complete with CI, continuous deployment, tests and documentation because he is a very good developer. Through the course of the project he leverages his years of experience and background in CS and engineering to make a well-factored body of software that will be maintainable for years. He did this in only a couple months.

Bob looks at the requirements for the CMS. He thinks "I know, I will use a good application framework and an ORM". Bob writes a couple thousand lines of code with all the tests and stuff that Clyde had. Bob's tests and app code, however, are more focused on the customer's needs, making in maintainable for anyone who can read the documentation of the software he's chosen to use. It takes him a couple weeks.

Alice looks at the requirements for the CMS. She realizes the customer will do just fine with Wordpress with a couple of tweaks. She sets up a hosted blog so nobody has to actually maintain it. She has better shit to do with her time.

Alice did the least work but that doesn't make her less productive. You're solving problems. If you do work to solve those problems, fine, but having more "output" doesn't make you go from a 1x to a 30x engineer.

<comment><USER3> Sounds great in theory. But what about the business perspective? Alice fixed your problem but Clyde gave your company a new product which can bring revenue and become even more profitable that your existing products.

Remember Slack? They needed to chat. Alice said "let's use mIRC". Clyde implemented an IRC clone. Now Slack is a billion-dollar business...

<comment><USER4> If you want to post animated gifs and embed youtube videos you can't use IRC. Everything depends on the requirements. To find the right solution you have to understand what your client needs, not what he thinks he needs.

<comment><USER5> Yes you can, plenty of IRC clients let you post animated gifs, some would let you embed youtube videos I am sure.

<comment><USER6> Nope. And you have no guarantee that the server supports sending that, or that anyone else is using the same IRC client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the first mentions* I saw on HN about the elusive 10xer was an article about the exact types of gains the author of this article is talking about -- a 10xer knows where to apply their effort and as such is an order of magnitude faster in achieving the business outcome, not producing LOC.

I feel like the author has wrapped up some sensible expectations for any senior developer and then soiled the content with a clickbait title.

* something to do with using a sticker printed on a transparency instead of some computer vision project.

<comment><USER8> sadly it's precisely what business are not gonna doing. measuring developers by LOC instead of business outcome allows to detach their worth from their productivity, albeit the metric is flawed in many ways it's better to say 'you produced X LOC, here's a 100$ raise' than 'your solution saved us 100M$, here's a 100$ raise'

<comment><USER9> I've worked in multiple fortune 500 companies and startups at the entry and now management level and been involved in Web Development for 20 years. I've never seen a LOC report except when we run some games with the other devs to see # of changes in GIT or other source control.

<comment><USER10> Can you tell me which companies you've worked for that determined developer value by the effect on the bottom line? Because I'd like to send them my resume.

<comment><USER11> Yes. Just because we all recognize that LOC is a shitty metric, doesn't mean that the industry has figured out what a good metric is. Measuring developer productivity and impact remains an unsolved problem. It still amounts to gut feel, and mostly whether or not your manager likes you or not, i.e. how much of a thorn you are to him/her.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Two more quotes about this subject:

Jeff Atwood: "the best code is no code at all. Every new line of code you willingly bring into the world is code that has to be debugged, code that has to be read and understood, code that has to be supported. Every time you write new code, you should do so reluctantly, under duress, because you completely exhausted all your other options."

Robert Galanakis: "The fastest code is the code which does not run. The code easiest to maintain is the code that was never written."

<comment><USER13> > _Robert Galanakis: "The fastest code is the code which does not run. The > code easiest to maintain is the code that was never written."_

Obviously that has limits, else the best MVP would be empty space.

<comment><USER9> It didn't say the best product. It said "fastest" and "easiest to maintain" code, which are only two of hundreds of factors for success. Many of which are not code related.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The fundamental point ("less is more") is a good point that is needlessly obscured by a layer of buzzword-talk ("10x engineer", etc.). Using the buzzword-talk makes for a nice clickbaity headline, but as a consequence, the author spends at least 30% of the article addressing and explaining things related to the buzzword of choice. Such discussion is of little substance. Ultimately, the article can be distilled to a few central tenets (e.g. "don't build anything unnecessary -- think about the human costs of maintenance"). I consider this somewhat ironic: the article, which is chiefly about avoiding cruft in production, contains a fair amount of cruft.

</comment><comment><USER15> This whole article misses the point of what productive means and why 10x developers are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars at Google et al.

Basically, the author has defined 0.1x to be EXACTLY what people mean when they say a 10x Engineer.

All of this "non-productive" stuff they are mentioning is the actual productivity that the 10x Engineer delivers. Somebody who writes hundreds of thousands of lines of unnecessary code is, by definition, not a 10x Engineer.

</comment><comment><USER16> In the interests of context and actual references regarding the 10x thing, I have canned response that I churn out:

The 10x programmers thing; from a 2nd edition of Peopleware, the 10x programmer is not a myth, but it's comparing your best to your worst – NOT best to median (it's also not about programming specifically; it's simply a common distribution in many metrics of performance).

The rule of thumb Peopleware states is that you can rely on the best outperforming the worst by a factor of 10, and you can rely on your best outperforming your median by a factor of 2.5 (this of course indicates that if you are that median developer, middle of the pack, you're already a 4x developer under this numbering scheme).

Obviously, this is a statistical rule, and if you've got a tiny sample size or some kind of singular outlier or other such; well, we're all adults and we understand how statistics and distributions work.

Peopleware uses Boehn (1981), Sackman (1968), Augustine (1979) and Lawrence (1981) as its sources.

[ "Peopleware", DeMarco and Lister, 1987, p45 ]

<comment><USER17> > it's comparing your best to your worst

To be clear, DeMarco found clustering, so it's not _your_ best to _your_ worst, where _you_ refers to a given organization. The gap appears only when looking interorganizationally. In the measured comparable tests they did one company had a lot of highly effective programmers, another company had a lot of ineffective programmers, and it wasn't common to find mixtures of both kinds at any given company. So at a given company it will appear that everyone is similarly productive, and the people there may tend to believe 10:1 is a myth. The 10:1 is only apparent when comparing people interorganizationally.

Also, of course the productivity was not in terms of LOC per hour, but was in terms of several elements regarding solving a given problem correctly. In general the highest productivity people solved that given problem in 10x less time using 10x fewer LOC and 10x fewer bugs than the lowest productivity people who used more LOC to accomplish the same thing, introducing more bugs in the process, and taking more time to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> when I started as a trainee dev I was paired with a more experienced dev on my first project and one of the things he was fond of saying was our first role was to challenge the need to build anything at all. This had a significant impact on the project by identifying quite a lot of features that the requirements document had classed as necessary but the users and managers who would use the system confirmed tat they were nice to haves and would not be needed for at least 18-24 months as the functionality that was needed for them to be useful was not built. 2 years later and the functionality has still not been built and it has no time frame for making it into production. Cutting out those jobs early on saved a lot of hassle, time and money and I have carried that thought process with me as we go.

Do we really need to do it?

<comment><USER19> Why not just sort the list of requirements according to urgency?

At least, that way, you'll be prepared for the less urgent features when you get to them.

<comment><USER20> > Why not just sort the list of requirements according to urgency?

This is a noble idea except that there is more than a dozen ways which "urgency" can be measured. Do you measure by its deadline, where the requirement is sourced, its dependencies etc.

<comment><USER19> That might be true, but I fail to see why the originally proposed method is to be preferred.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What a fool. Only doing what is necessary rather than spending hours and hours reinventing pointless wheels or introducing pointless abstractions is one of the key techniques that 10x programmers use.

There are counterpoints to many of his arguments, too. For example, using existing software is good, unless that software is a bad fit. You can end up with a Rube-Goldberg-esque monstrosity, held together by duct-tape that is impossible to use ("enter your back-end SQL query here in this tiny little text box") or impossible to maintain.

<comment><USER22> I completely agree. For each 'oh look I found a plugin/library that does that' you can end up with

\+ something what you need-ish, PLUS crap you don't \+ a layer of glue code to your codebase that will be as hard or harder to maintain. \+ your famously fantastic imported code will have it's bugs, that will be hard to find (as it's not owned) \+ nobody will 'know/own' it, so any tweaks will be duct taped. \+ it will diverge upstream, will at some point your version become fallow, and you end up with 'code sclerosis': you can no longer extract the old and get a new, fresh version.

So yes, all that time and headache you will spend for your 'quick win' could have been spent solving the problem for YOUR use case by paying the price upfront and writing the code.

I've seen that so many times it's not even funny. There is also the manager's version of that, with the world famous "I found that library online, does JUST what we need and only costs $5k, and we even get SUPPORT!11!!"

<comment><USER23> This, so much this.

I would never want to work for a company who's business model is shoehorning random libs together into a frankenstein just to quickly get that client out the door and a new client in.

<comment><USER24> Wouldn't that be a little like a construction worker fashioning his own hammer, cutting his own boards, fabricating his own cinder blocks, etc?

<comment><USER23> Sure if you were rolling everything yourself. But you can still use pre-built solutions.

As a developer I use frameworks to aid in my building, like a construction worker uses premade hammers. But if a building needs a specific type of board, cutting our own wood is a viable option, or molding our own blocks.

The foundation is solid, but we build on top of it so our house is unique and to specifications, not just a cookie cutter run of the mill house that everyone else has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _The times I feel I've made most difference to our team's effectiveness is when I find ways to not build things._

"We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris." — Larry Wall, Programming Perl (1st edition), O'Reilly[1]

[1] [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris)

<comment><USER26> Ironically, almost all Perl code I've dealt with contains large helpings of the last two in the form of layers of ever more complex NIH code as each new set of people work on the code.

<comment><USER27> I've hacked in stuff like that when it becomes apparent that the CPAN solution could not be made useful in a reasonable amount of time. I've only had this problem with the SOAP implementations, thus far. Except SOAP::Lite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I may have missed this part in the article, but the "0.1x" moniker, as a reaction to the "10x" label... seems to miss the point.

The "10x" type folks I know are "10 times as productive" as others _precisely_ because they know how to deal with some of those issues in the 0.1x list - push off new features, reduce amount of new tech introduced, drop old features, etc.

Knowing how to focus on the things that provide the _most_ value in the _least_ effort - but still move the project forward - that's where my understanding of the 10x label always was based. Maybe I'd had it wrong and people were always focused on "lines of code"?

Or maybe this was the point the OP was making anyway, but it went over my head. I know only a handful of places that have ever really looked at pure "output" (of code, for example) as the primary productivity measure.

<comment><USER29> >Maybe I'd had it wrong and people were always focused on "lines of code"?

No, the original studies talked about 10x _productivity_ , not 10x lines of code. The more productive developers also produced fewer lines of code for similarly complex tasks, and it was easier to debug, to understand, and to modify. They also frequently would produce net-negative-lines-of-code on productive days.

Article is clickbait with a strawman premise, no question. I think it particularly attracts the clicks of 1x developers who like to think the 10x developers aren't anything special. There are certainly many more 1x developers.

The top-voted comment as I write this frames someone who recommends WordPress as a solid engineer. Enough said.

<comment><USER6> "The top-voted comment as I write this frames someone who recommends WordPress as a solid engineer. Enough said."

What's this mean? The top-voted comment describes a scenario in which WordPress does meet the business needs, and yet two others decide to go and write from-scratch code. Whereas the other one has time to actually solve the problems the business has.

If you're trying to be a WordPress snob, then you're missing the point entirely.

<comment><USER29> WordPress-as-a-service can meet business needs. But WordPress is an awful idea outside of that. Someone is needed full time to keep it and its plug-ins patched. I would laugh at just about anyone who suggested a self-hosted WordPress as a reasonable solution to anything.

There are other sites where you can get managed CMS hosting (wix.com, squarespace.com, even wpengine.com etc.) to build a CMS on.

To suggest that "WordPress" is a good solution at this point should get you laughed out of the room. wpengine.com is a reasonable solution. "WordPress", hosted on your own server, is a disaster waiting to happen.

I actually tried building something, not on WordPress, but Drupal, and as a result can't imagine recommending anything that's PHP-based being a good technical solution.

Call me a PHP snob then. It's so horrible to work with I can't imagine that other solutions can't be better.

<comment><USER6> So one, you completely missed the part about her suggesting a hosted solution, and two, you're being a snob about stuff for no other reason than to be a snob. I don't think anyone can take your assessments about this stuff seriously.

<comment><USER29> >So one, you completely missed the part about her suggesting a hosted solution

Hosted != wpengine.com, hosted can mean a managed site with CPanel installed.

> you're being a snob about stuff for no other reason than to be a snob

No, I avoid using or recommending technology that is insecure-by-design. That includes PHP and just about everything built on it.

>I don't think anyone can take your assessments about this stuff seriously.

Considering how much I make consulting about "this stuff," I have no worry about how seriously I'm taken. Sorry if I've offended a technology you like, but it's really pretty awful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Great clickbait title but I do agree with the point of the article. I know "excellent" programmers that their first reaction is to crank out as much code as possible. My reaction is always: let's find a plugin that does this, I am too lazy to write it from scratch. Most of the time it gets the job done faster with fewer bugs.

<comment><USER31> Yep. It always helps to take a step back and ask yourself what you're trying to achieve here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> As there is "more than needed" there is "less than needed", thus adding, not adding, removing or not removing features should be given equal consideration.

What I strive for, is to be a "textbook" engineer. I'd like my work to be as a textbook example, something a newcomer could use to learn the technology I am working on or that a new maintainer would have no trouble understand what I did.

Of course I'm failing at it. :)

</comment><comment><USER33> > Let's not build that feature. > Is there existing software that could be > used instead?

Where is the fun of being a software engineer, then?

<comment><USER34> If you become reasonably good at finding existing solutions to the problem at hand, and you save 90% of yours and company's time, then it frees you (and the business, and consequently society at large) to pursue any other new problems that haven't yet been solved. Software is a means, not an end in itself.

To me, solving known problems and doing the same thing over and over, just changing the tools, is akin to digging holes and covering them again. And what is the fun in that?

<comment><USER35> I see that line of thinking a lot in the iOS dev community. Lot of people publish components, and lots of people just stick together published components.

Of course, each of those components is a dependency. It's not unusual to see an app use a dozen third party frameworks.

Every time that an OS upgrade comes along, you need to hope that non of the dozen frameworks you are using breaks, and if one does break, hope that it is still maintained. If not, you will have to get familiar with an unknown codebase at the most inopportune moment...

Also, usually existing components do only 75% of what you need, and lots of stuff you don't.

If you write everything yourself, you will never depend on other people to maintain code that you use, and you wont include lots of bloat that you don't need.

<comment><USER6> At the same time, I've seen rationality like yours result in people building their own versions of things that are available in the standard toolkit.

<comment><USER35> Why not? Sometimes the stuff in the standard toolkit is crap.

I mainly work on the Mac, and the classes provided with AppKit vary greatly in quality. Most parts work really well, but others are really buggy. For example, after years of struggling with IKImageBrowser, I just wrote my own grid view. It would have saved me a lot of trouble if I'd have done that in the first place.

<comment><USER6> For a limited few things, maybe. But the vast majority of things don't need that. I'm dealing right now with someone who wrote their own autocomplete text view, which doesn't work properly now that I've fixed their mess with auto layout.

<comment><USER35> I'll have to do that soon as well... I get lots of requests for auto-complete in my app, but it looks like Apple's built-in autocomplete is unfortunately not flexible enough for my needs (eg. it has it's own ideas what a word is that aren't compatible with SQL)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A lot of this blog post assumes that developers have a voice at the table. In my experience at smaller software companies/startups the model can best be described as WDD, Whim Driven Development. If someone has a whim, the developer provides the way.

<comment><USER36> This happens a lot in companies where the CEO drives product decisions. There's nobody to push back on ideas, so you end up with developers implementing every half-baked idea that comes out of one person's mouth.

In grownup companies, where you have a product manager and that person has a boss and that person has a boss, the product manager has to justify his decisions to people and has to get feedback, and perhaps has to convince people before he/she's let loose on the engineers, so you get a lot less time wastage on people's whims.

In really big-boy companies, engineering and QA has a stake and can push back on harebrained ideas too! The best places have it where there's a product manager, a project manager, an engineering lead, and a QA lead, and they all are empowered to get into a room and have to agree on whether what we're doing provides business value, whether it's feasible, and if can be done by the deadline.

Of course, in any case if you've got senior leadership who engage in seagull management, all bets are off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> 10x more productive is 10x more selective [1]. So yes, 0.1 in a sense.

[1]: [http://yosefk.com/blog/10x-more- selective.html](http://yosefk.com/blog/10x-more-selective.html)

</comment><comment><USER38> I think a core problem that the author identifies is that it's very easy to find markers of programming ability, and those are the things we've optimized for, while its much more difficult and time consuming to determine if some one has good judgement. You can be an amazing engineer, but being an ok engineer with good judgment ("do we REALLY need to do this?") generates more value.

</comment><comment><USER39> Recent related experience:

About a month ago a friend asked for help with his arduino project. He was having difficulty figuring out obstacle navigation. Getting the compass to work combined with the math strategy had him puzzled.

My suggestion, based on my experience as pilot, removed the compass and the math calculations. We both had a great time working with the implications of this new approach.

Offering a fresh perspective from a different domain was very valuable. Reducing the complexity of the solution to his problem made sense to me, felt good, and delivered an easier to maintain "product".

My friend is about 70 yo and has been developing software professionally since his early 20's. His resume is filled with pretty cool projects with notable peers in tech over those 5-ish decades. There was something very affirming about being able to help such an accomplished engineer in this manner. I learned a lot in that hour.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is absolutely ridiculous. Obviously a 10x engineer is not the one who churns out lines of code, but instead the one who produces results without a lot of code.

> I have observed that some people are able to get 10 times more done than me.

There are many poor definitions of "getting things done". Why waste time using them?

</comment><comment><USER41> I think there is a ton of subtly and trade-offs around choosing to do vs not do something. Of course not doing something is better in the abstract, but that isn't always an option. I'd be much more interested to read something on how to best make these kinds of trade-offs.

</comment><comment><USER42> Things to note about 10x developers:

I have only been able to group developers into the following categories:

\- not competent

\- competent

\- competent + problem focused

I would never hire non-compitent developers. They suck. They make terrible decisions and code. They are many.

I would be careful hiring competent developers. In fact a competent developer is usually a junior developer who needs proper mentoring. I would push hard for getting that developer above competent.

The last type of developer is the golden goose. They can code, but they are focused on solving problems NOT writing code. They focus on what problems need solving, can they be solved later, what is the price of solving such problems. All that while being competent at making code.

So thinking of someone as 10x or 0.1x is an error IMO.

</comment><comment><USER43> He has a point when you are talking about a large company. It is hard to extract the full potential of most 10x engineers in this setting. Difficult, but not impossible. Put those people in R&D or in some leaner group creating the next thing, not the current one. If what they make doesn't have a net positive impact then throw it away.

In a small startup the 10x'ers are critical. When you don't have a product sitting around and deciding what to build is probably worse than giving up. MVP it over and over until you have something. 0.1x'ers please don't apply.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is a great idea. The problem is convincing management to keep you employed. :)

Whenever I see another 100mb update for trivial software, I'm reminded of Raymond Chen's blog on this topic - [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061101-03/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061101-03/?p=29153)

</comment><comment><USER45> Have been on board with this idea for some time, but, that said, here's some criticism of the specifics:

> Is there existing software that could be used instead?

Agree, up to a point. Very few OTS/SAAS solutions are practical financially and customized, and if they are (as in a company that adds those crazy features you want to their SAAS app)- watch out! Those companies products will end up hitting a wall eventually because they will have coded themselves into a corner. Note: this actually because the company you are using didn't use the 0.1x engineer philosophy.

> Let's not build/deploy that development tool.

Maybe. But it depends. How often is human error affecting your process in a very time-consuming way? You wouldn't say CI is a bad thing would you? What about using an IDE when you've got developers or a development language that best lends itself to an IDE? You would buy that IDE right (unless you're really, really cash-strapped- compare it to the cost of a few days of your developer's time)?

> Let's not adopt this new technology.

Maybe. How about instead- let's adopt what are solid winners technology-wise that will help us attract new talent _and_ develop features more quickly. And when we do that, we first do in small pieces that are independent to prove it out, then eventually we commit to using it as much as it makes sense so that we don't end up with 3 tech stacks to maintain in ten years.

> Can we achieve the same thing with a technology that the team is already > using and familiar with? "The best tool for the job" is a very dangerous > phrase.

Sure, mostly. But don't get a shitty open-source IDE instead of paying $600 for a good one, or force developers that use UI tools to use vim because you're too darn cheap either, even if it would do the job. On the other hand, I agree- don't just buy things. Really let your dev teams hash it out and choose appropriate tools- don't dictate anything without getting feedback and adequate buy-in when it comes to tools.

> Let's not automate this.

Again- what about CI and scripts that can help make developers work consistently, more productively, more efficiently overall, and with fewer errors?

Sure- if you are a one-man team, you might not need continuous deployment yet, but please don't sit there and have devs pulling oars in your wooden sea vessel as the hovercrafts speed past you in the race.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think the correct definition of a 10x developer includes what you're describing as a 0.1x engineer. It's not that they are simply more prolific, but that they are more prolific, impactful, and efficient.

</comment><comment><USER47> The best company in the world is one where it has 0 cost, requires 0 effort, and generates billions of dollars in revenue. It doesn't exist, but that's what everyone should strive for.

<comment><USER48> This whole business of the universe spawning humanity to generate billions of revenue required no effort or cost on its part. All the effort was spent by the life forms it allowed to happen.

What you said reminded me that time I rejected a $10k contract and told my wedding photographer client to signup for a $40 per month product instead, and saved them $9520. I didn't see any of that money, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is this a satire? Can't tell from the text itself...

<comment><USER50> I am profoundly surprised that someone would characterize this text as being even remotely satirical. What gives you this impression? What industry and perspective do you have on the points made?

<comment><USER49> Are you serious? The whole article seems like a parody - (intentionally?) not understanding what 10x means vs unnecessary bloat and then proceeding on...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The sad truth is the larger the organization the more removed and individual engineer is from defining the work and prioritizing its business value.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've often joked that 10x programmers were the ones who used multiple cursors. Seriously though, I would argue that writing a lot of code, even if it's not all going to be the next cash-cow for your company, is good for the hackers soul. It also adds intellectual property and infrastructure to your company.

<comment> jon-wood Adding infrastructure for its own sake is a terrible idea. Someone is going to have to care for that infrastructure, its going to be another thing to keep on your mental model of how everything fits together, and in many cases it's going to be another thing that needs changing when the requirements change later.

<comment><USER52> Obviously just adding more moving pieces for no benefit is a waste of time. However there are many areas that can be improved or even entirely automated with software.

My bigger point was that writing code is not "a bad thing that should be avoided" because I think it helps programmers understand the problem and can add more value than debt. Even if it may change at some unknown point in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> In other words, your team doesn't have an effective lead dev, and you'd prefer to fill that gap rather than just build build build. Fair enough.

With a decent lead to direct them to the right tasks I'd much rather a 10x than an 0.1x

<comment><USER54> It's more than fair enough. Why would you want to build build build?

Most of the ideas coming from the business side aren't that good. I think that's what he's saying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Click-bait title, maybe a better title is 'how to be more effective'?

All of the tasks mentioned are valuable assets to the business. Operational support, developing new features, understanding dependencies, building tools, communication - they're all part of the job man.

53 upvotes and these goober comments reminds me that HN is mostly <21 years old; time to move on.

<comment><USER50> Move on to what? Care to explain. You mention 53 upvotes, is that good or bad? I detect cynicism but I am genuinely interested in your point.

<comment><USER55> I'll move on to an HN with an older demo, or no HN at all. OP posted a click- bait trash article and people are upvoting; it just makes me wonder if this site has any legitimately talented programmers at all or if they're busy actually doing things in the real world; my guess is the ladder and that real devs would only post a show hn.

Young programmers I guess. Don't mean to hate, but I used to enjoy HN.

<comment><USER56> Got anything about the article's content you want to complain about or is it just the choice of words?

Just because you got it all down does not mean that the very same topics won't be discussed again and again by the next generation. And you know why? Because YOU (and me) apparently failed to provide the next generation with a "programming bible" that answers all questions once and for all.

Let's try not to be the "young, hip executives" Zappa complained about: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GowCEiZkU70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GowCEiZkU70)

Last but not least: with age comes wisdom or so they say. Sometimes it is wiser just not to comment at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reverse-engineering the TL431: the most common chip you've never heard of (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2014/05/reverse-engineering-tl431-most-common.html <comment><USER2> Richi's Lab[1] also contains a large number of pictures and analysis of decapped ICs. He's also documented his decapping process[2] which uses an oven rather than the dangerous acids, making it more approachable.

It's all in German, but Google Translate does a good enough job that it's easy to follow.

He's got a very interesting comparison of STM32 originals and clones, as well as various voltage references, 555 timers etc.

A personal favorite is the LTZ1000[3]. The die is a piece of art.

[1]: [https://www.richis-lab.de/index.htm](https://www.richis- lab.de/index.htm)

[2]: [https://www.richis-lab.de/decap-ofen.htm](https://www.richis- lab.de/decap-ofen.htm)

[3]: [https://www.richis-lab.de/REF03.htm](https://www.richis- lab.de/REF03.htm)

<comment><USER3> Particularly for German, I highly recommend [https://deepl.com](https://deepl.com) it does a much better job than google translate.

<comment><USER2> They don't seem to support translating a whole page, or am I missing something? Copy/pasting is tedious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> there is something reassuringly "analogue" about how these artifacts get over the technology limits of diffusion/mask/layer systems, to make building blocks:

"I need a resistor? fine: lay out a huge amount of stuff"

"No, I need it more accurate! fine: lay out tracks, now burn fuses to select from unit-scale tracks the 'right' number, and if you want better _use a laser_ to do it"

<comment><USER5> The general rule for precision electronics is that you want to avoid anything that needs high absolute accuracy (because such things get expensive fast even as discrete components) and instead rely on accurate ratios between parameters, matched pairs of components and inaccurate, but long term stable parameters that can be calibrated out.

<comment><USER6> > The general rule for precision electronics is that you want to avoid > anything that needs high absolute accuracy (because such things get > expensive fast even as discrete components) and instead rely on accurate > ratios between parameters, matched pairs of components and inaccurate, but > long term stable parameters that can be calibrated out.

The omitted serial comma made that really hard to parse for me. In case it did for anyone else, I think that it's:

> (accurate ratios between parameters) and (matched pairs of components) and > (inaccurate, but long-term stable, parameters that can be calibrated out).

<comment><USER7> I've started using hyphens to offset clauses that nest inside of other comma- separated syntactic structures for this reason. It keeps my intent way more clear without forcing the reader to reparse the sentence if they incorrectly guess how the commas are supposed to line up.

> accurate ratios between parameters, and matched pairs of components, and > inaccurate - but long-term stable - parameters that can be calibrated out.

is much easier to follow at a glance.

<comment><USER5> That is what I wanted to rewrite it to, but it is too late to edit the comment ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The link on forming capacitors leads to a rather interesting old book on IC fabrication, which is still relevant for fundamentals (you can scroll up for other devices):

[http://books.google.com/books?id=aByz-- 9D63wC&lpg=PA31&ots=Z...](http://books.google.com/books?id=aByz-- 9D63wC&lpg=PA31&ots=ZJ3V72sLcD&dq=%22junction%20capacitor%22%20integrated%20circuit&pg=PA31#v=onepage&q&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER9> > The MagSafe adapter and other laptop adapters use it, as well as > minicomputers, LEDdrivers, audio power supplies, video games and > televisions.[4]

The word minicomputers is a dead link to [https://web.archive.org/web/20170118103738/http://bitsavers....](https://web.archive.org/web/20170118103738/http://bitsavers.informatik.uni- stuttgart.de/pdf/hp/1000/A-series/02156-90003_A600_A600+_ERD_Vol2_Jun84.pdf), which is some reference documentation for the HP 1000 A600 computer.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, I've fixed the link.

</comment></comment><comment> yjftsjthsd-h Looks like (2014).

Nice explanation. Always fun to see the actual intersection where physical properties create a functional circuit.

</comment><comment><USER10> Any other suggestions for common yet generally unknown chips?

<comment><USER11> The NE555-timer is quite a cool little thing.

More common operational amplifiers are also worth looking into (TL072 is one of my favorites).

Lastly, the 7400-series logic chips are SO interesting. If you need the programmer's version of a jigsaw puzzle, try to build somewhat advanced designs using those. It's very fun and a good learning experience (although hard!).

This guy is building a computer on a breadboard – very intersting indeed: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS0N5baNlQWJCUrhCEo8WlA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS0N5baNlQWJCUrhCEo8WlA)

<comment><USER12> NE555 is not "unknown" (most popular chip in the entire history of electronic engineering), 74xx and TL072 are not unknown either, anyone who knows a little bit of hardware knows the chip.

TL431 is popular yet unknown to most people outside the world of switched-mode power supply. I think the OP wants some popular yet relatively less-known chip to those who is outside of the field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was really interesting, but also it just as a byproduct of the explanation actually explains how the core circuit elements are actually implemented (resistors, NPN vs. PNP transistors) which I found really interesting. I had a general idea of transistor implementation, but always just assumed resistors were varying dopants or some such, rather than the now obvious "make it longer/thinner".

<comment><USER14> As a rule, you want your resistors made of metal. Semiconductor resistors have a lot of really surprising behavior.

But, yeah, if precision and stability do not matter, it's cheaper to make them out of silicon.

<comment><USER15> > As a rule, you want your resistors made of metal. Semiconductor resistors > have a lot of really surprising behavior.

So much so that probably the most common semiconductor resistors where linearity is needed are actually transistors. Stick on external reference resistor in, use current mirrors inside to distribute the reference current around the circuit, and use transistors in the active region (linear region for FETs). It's also cheaper since transistors take less area than resistors.

<comment><USER13> Follow up dumb question - I thought transistors take time to charge/discharge/do-physics-things, how do they avoid resistance changing over time.

<comment><USER15> They change a bit, but primarily at startup. After that they're controlled by the stability of the biasing.

I'd recommend "Designing Analog Chips" by Hans Camenzind[0], the designer of the 555 timer. Particularly chapter 3, "Current Mirrors".

[0] [http://www.designinganalogchips.com/](http://www.designinganalogchips.com/) has a free pdf

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am pleased that part of his reverse-engineering process included smashing open the package using a vice-grips as this is the kind of barbaric method I would use. I feel more connected to the article in this way.</comment>


The London Big-O Meetup - <AUTHOR> http://www.meetup.com/big-o-london/

<comment><USER2> Signed up but had a very hard time thinking of an answer to the mandatory question "what's your favourite data structure?"!

<comment><USER3> I am ashamed to admit that when I was in undergrad I thought red-black trees were the coolest. I liked the mechanics of rotations and the overall balancing of the structure. I still think it's interesting but haven't really used anything beyond lists, sets, and maps in practice.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason I started this meetup was because so many people feel like this :)

The funny thing is, 'lists, sets and maps' aren't actually specific data structures—they're actually collections of operations with certain expectations (a.k.a an 'interface'). How is an associative array implemented, for example? The language you use, which provides you with a standard implementation, has made that decision for you. But there are so many more, and they all have trade-offs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> O(man) I'm busy then but I would love to come to this in the future! Cool event! Consider inviting professors from CMU, including but not limited to Guy Blelloch and Robert Harper.</comment>


Would you use this app to connect with relatives? - <AUTHOR> We have built social networking app for Relatives. You can add your family tree and it gets merged with other family trees as you add more people. For example, if you add your uncle and he adds his wife and kids then you will see his tree and your tree, all connected through your parents. You can send private messages or post on family tree wall.  Here is a video so you can see the demo or playstore link if my description is not clear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulJN3er-7Co&feature=youtu.be
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.relatives
We do not know where to take this app from here.  Let's say we built all this database of all most of the relatives of most of the families in a region or country, how can it be useful? In "theory", this will map out all relations of everyone in the world, its like google earth of people.  I am completely open to all honest feedback or suggestions. Here are a few questions which I am struggling to answer myself and I NEED YOUR HELP. Desperately.
Please give me BLUNT and HONEST feedback. I KNOW for sure we are doing something wrong. We are just trying to learn. 1) Would you use the app? Why yes or no? 2) What would make the app better? 3) Who- government, companies, brands can potentially benefit from this?
THANK YOU. Relatives Team <comment><USER2> Can you be UPFRONT and HONEST about who you're going to sell the data to first before we make our decision?

</comment><comment><USER3> Where is the link to demo video, link to website and app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just added the links to the description.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulJN3er-7Co&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulJN3er-7Co&feature=youtu.be)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.relatives](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.relatives)</comment></comment>


We Need an FDA for Algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/66/clockwork/we-need-an-fda-for-algorithms <comment><USER2> > "So I think we need something like the FDA for algorithms."

I can't say for sure that the author or interviewee even knows what the definition of an algorithm is.

No, the government absolutely should _not_ be involved in regulating algorithms. You'll be able to enjoy a burdensome system for anyone that isn't a massive corporation. Good luck competing against Google when every 10 lines of code you write, you need to seek government approval.

I know you're not supposed to be dismissive on Hacker News, but it's so difficult to take this seriously when you display this level of technical ignorance.

<comment><USER3> Unchecked algorithms at scale have already had a significant and often detrimental impact on society.

A solution is to break up and/or regulate FAANG sufficiently such that algorithmic regulations do not impede David's from reasonably competing.

Or, such regulations could also be targeted at bigger players past a certain size, and not apply as strictly to smaller scale applications. It is the broad scale application of an algorithm that often facilitates its ability to be effective, after all.

<comment><USER4> Do you have an example of 'an unchecked algorithm at scale'?

<comment> m-p-3 Your Facebook news feed?

AFAIK, no one else outside of people working at Facebook can see how the algorithm decides what should be on top of your feed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From TFA:

"Hannah Fry points out something interesting about the phrase "Hello World." It's never been quite clear, she says, whether the phrase—which is frequently the entire output of a student's first computer program—is supposed to be attributed to the program, awakening for the first time, or to the programmer, announcing their triumphant first creation."

Did she try asking programmers instead of guessing?

<comment><USER6> Seconded. It's obviously supposed to be attributed to the program. The tradition extends to very experienced programmers trying out a new language or a new complex deployment setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So I need to file for premarket approval every time I want to use a b-tree?

Jest aside, I think there is a real lack of clarity in what Fry is asking for here. You don't need a computer to bumble your way into reinventing redlining, yet at the same time a single algorithmic tool can be benign or morally terrifying based on application.

What are the boundaries Fry seeks and what moral principles do we base them on? What mechanism(s) does she envision as proper to enforce them? That bit about pre-market approval isn't entirely a joke - the analogy to FDA specifically rather than another regulator implies either pre-market approval processes or a bad author. How do we categorize which pieces of software to subject to what levels of scrutiny?

I don't mean to poo-poo the idea of getting limits around software that is making more and more impactful decisions. Hopefully the reason this article is so light on detail is because the reporter doesn't understand the subject matter. But Fry's response to the data ownership question is the sign of someone that always punts to "experts" when pressed on the finer details.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, there is the NIST dictionary of algorithms and data structures, which has been around since 1998, and was updated as recently as last week.

[https://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/](https://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/)

<comment><USER9> I thought of NIST.

And of how many government deployed algorithms should be documented and evaluated, as a condition of use. For example, "risk" profilers that are being used to determine prison sentencing and parole/supervision provisions.

Health care related algorithms are another obvious candidate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> They're not talking about algorithms, from between reading the lines, but scummy businesses which sell fake software products.

Question is: why then are they calling them algorithms.</comment>


Six Things I Learned Working from Home - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andymboyle/six-things-i-learned-working-from-home-6788d148bde5

<comment><USER2> Haha, great list! Depending on your job profile, I'd also add putting light music. Or rainy mood sound. I dunno, just makes me focus better.</comment>


Steve Jobs Interviewed Just Before Returning to Apple - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaJp66ArJVI <comment><AUTHOR> How come one guy can change so many industries? It is not just luck. How come steve jobs is so good whatever he done or bet on changed the whole industry?</comment>


Ask HN: Did Leibniz beat Newton? - <AUTHOR>

In The Information, Jame Gleick posits that Leibniz "triumphed" over Newton during Babbage's time, becoming the preferred Calculus. Is today's Calculus more Leibniz than Newton? <comment><USER2> The details of the Calculus were not worked out until decades after Newton and Leibniz: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_analysis>.

However, the notation that most people use to denote infinitesimals and differentiation is Leibniz's notation: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibnizs_notation></comment>


Distributed Map Reduce in Go: Smaller Than Small - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/distributed-map-reduce-in-go-smaller-than-small-b9d97efd78cb#.d9ea6fuyk <comment><USER2> Love this idea. How to help</comment>